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As a university chair, Fachgebiet Bahnbetrieb und Infrastruktur (Railway operations and Infrastructure) is heavily in involved in railway education. A significant amount of time and effort is dedicated to lectures. Besides this, there is a heavy focus on incorporating practical aspects in education, e.g. providing courses in the Eisenbahn-betriebs- und Experimentierfeld (Ebuef, Railway Operations Laboratory), giving students a well-rounded understanding of the railway system. The chair is very much interested in exploring options and possibilities of how railway education can be done successfully in the future.

With regards to research, the main areas the chair is involved with, are:

• Operation: The railway system with its manifold processes places high demands on operation, especially in a liberalized market. The chair’s key areas of research are staff support within these processes, resource conservation and the application of new technologies.
• Incidents and Accident Analysis: Incidents and accidents are still happening. The research area explores how it can be learned from these events with a strong focus on barriers which can prevent an accident to happen.
• Rail Human Factors: The role of the human in the railway system is constantly changing. The research area looks at all aspects of the human in the system, e.g. system design, rule design, cognitive load/ work load. The chair will use the existing cab simulators as well as operations simulators for explorative studies.
• Risk and Safety: How safe is safe enough? The changing railway system demands an intensive assessment and analysis of how this will affect the overall safety of the system.
• Strategy: Railway transportation is confronted with ever new challenges. It has to face changing demand behavior and new basic conditions in order to stay in business. Thus, the chair’s research also focuses on sustainable forms of offer and production in passenger and freight transport.

• Dr.-Ing. Birgit Milius, Head of Chair: railway accident analysis, rail human factors, railway operations, risk and safety of railways, railway education
• Heiko Herholz, contact for railway operations laboratory: railway operations, railway operations training
• -Ing. Ulrich Zimmermann: alternative propulsion systems and infrastructure, local traffic tenders, operation of urban and suburban railway transportation, network and vehicle deployment planning, energy optimized railway operations
• Sc. Philipp Schneider: railway operations, railway signaling; design of railway infrastructure, planning of railway systems and signaling and control systems; railway resilience

A selection of projects, activities and papers:

• Skillfull: assessing the need for changes in training and education content, curricula, tools and methodologies absolutely imperative, incorporating lifelong learning aspects for the professionals in all transports areas. Focus of the chair: human factors implications,EU project.
• Drive2theFuture: Connected automated driving for the future. Focus of the chair: human factors implications,EU project
• Erarbeitung eines Rückfallebenenkonzepts für einen sicheren und leistungsfähigen Bahnbetrieb nach IT-Angriffen auf das System Bahn: Project of the Vossloh-Stiftung, looking at the implication of Security Threats on operations in fallback mode.

Education and training

Education and training on different levels of expertise at the EBuEf (Railways Operations Laboratory), focus on rail traffic management and train operations

Recent publications

• Milius, Birgit: Der Mensch im System Bahn. In: Deine Bahn, 06/2020.
• Schneider, Philipp: Die Eisenbahn und das Notstandsrecht.In: Internationales Verkehrswesen (71), 3/2019, S. 18-23.
• Schneider, Philipp: Die Anbindung von Bundeswehr-Standorten an das Eisenbahnnetz.In: Eisenbahntechnische Rundschau, 6/2019, S. 49-53
• Schneider, Philipp; Emde, Armin; Hecht, Markus: Lärm in der Eisenbahnlehre. Deine Bahn 5/2018.
• Nickel, Klaus; Emde, Armin: Neue Regelwerke für Park- und Feldbahnen. Der Eisenbahn Ingenieur 05/18.
• von Mach, Stefan; Buschbeck, Jan; Flerlage, Heinz; Zimmermann, Ulrich; Boev, Pavel; Die Entwicklung und Markteinführung des TALENT 3 Batterietriebzuges. Eisenbahntechnische Rundschau 9/2018, ISSN 0013 – 2845
• Birgit Milius
  Human factors and their application in railways. Proceedings of European Safety and Reliability Conference ESREL 2017.
• Po-Chi Huang, Birgit Milius
  A roadmap to a safer railway: How the IT security threat will influence the way we handle railway operations in the future.
  Proceedings of European Safety and Reliability Conference ESREL 2017.
• Birgit Milius, Jörn Pachl
  Eisenbahnlehre modernisieren – Eisenbahnlehre 4.0. Deine Bahn, 1/2017.
• Marc Burkhard, Damaris Dose, Birgit Milius: Haptic Information for Reliable Displays. Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit. April 2016.

Poles of expertise in EURNEX (ranked list):

• Pole 2 Operation and system performance
• Pole 1 Strategy and economics
• Pole 8 Infrastructure and signaling
• Pole 3 Rolling Stock
• Pole 10 Training and education
• Pole 5 Intelligent mobility
• Pole7 Environment and Energy Efficiency